Dark Cover (The DARK Files #2) (3 page)

He placed a palm on the screen’s maze of streets and highways. “Don’t cut me out of the loop … Danielle. This charade won’t work if you do. I’ll shut it down.”

Surprised at the heated tone in such a cool customer, she angled her head at him.

His eyes blazed blue fire at her. Anger. And something else. Did he recognize her? She didn’t think so. Fear? Mr. Macho feared losing control?

Reluctant to touch him again, she hesitated. Being pressed against that hard body in a chaste embrace had heated her from the inside out. She didn’t need that complication.

But he needed reassurance.
She patted his hand, then snatched hers away. “I understand your concern. I didn’t mean to ignore you. We’re just into the standard drill.”

“License plate’s a rental,” Snow said. “This could be a shot over the bow.”

“So following us could be just a warning?” Nick asked.

“Exactly. To make you nervous.”

“Let’s let them know we’re on to them,” Snow suggested.

“You got it.” Vanessa studied the map and the alternate routes.

When they pulled onto the Beltway, the SUV was still with them. She watched the tail with her mirror.
“Sucker them,” she said to the driver. “They’re probably expecting us to exit at River Road. Take the one before it instead, onto the George Washington Parkway.”

“Roger that.” A moment later, Snow veered from the left lane across two lanes of traffic. Horns blared and tires screeched as they careened down the exit ramp.

The SUV tried to follow, but a tan Suburban cut it off.

The sudden turn slid the tablet to the floor. Vanessa landed in Nick’s lap. They lurched sideways into a corner. His arms went around her. One hand clamped her shoulder. The other brushed her breast before sliding to her waist.

Fiery tingles shot through her. Male heat and the scents of cedar and sage filled her senses.
So much for cool disdain.

When the car straightened out onto the Parkway, she realized how intimately she was draped across Nick’s lap. And how the contact had affected him.

Ye gods.
Heart pounding, she flew back to her side of the seat.

“Fasten your seat belts,” Snow ordered.

Ah, the famous line from an old Bette Davis movie. The rest popped into her head.

It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

NICK STRAIGHTENED HIS jacket and buckled his seat belt. His trousers pinched, thanks to his body’s reaction to having this woman’s body imprinted on his lap.

Apparently oblivious, her expression was neutral as she re-fastened her seat belt. Her cheeks glowed pink, but her transparent complexion probably reacted to any stimulus.

“Yo, Snow,” she said to the driver, “you took ten years off my life, but it was worth it. We lost them.”

“Anytime. V12 power. Yowza! All-wheel drive. Room for clubs in the trunk. Do much off-roading, Mr. M?”

His brush cut was all Nick could see above the headrest, but he heard the grin in the man’s voice as the powerful German machine sped eastward along the highway following the Potomac River’s meanderings.

“Not in this. Remember who owns the car. I’d like to be able to drive it again once this is over.” The S600 was an indulgence, one he deserved for working his butt off the past several years.

The man gave a slow nod. “Yes, sir. Will do.”

Nick muttered an inarticulate grunt. Famous last words. That’s exactly what Alexei had said before he’d totaled their father’s Alfa Romeo in a rocky field.

Snow adjusted his earpiece. “The other car’s following the Durango. Just a bunch of goons, but we’ll set up surveillance on them. CO says to keep our original route.”

“They followed us. We saw them. Now they know we saw them. What’s next?” Nick said.

“Probably nothing today,” the woman answered. “They’ll have to regroup. One thing we know about this bunch — they don’t give up.”

She directed Snow to take the next exit. In a few minutes they were rolling along Gouldsboro toward Bradley Boulevard, a direct route to Alexei’s house in Chevy Chase.

Now that Nick’s body had subsided, he settled back. Why’d he have such a strong reaction to her? What the hell was wrong with him?
He could think of a dozen reasons to avoid attraction, let alone sex, with her. Not the least of which was the fact that she was a government agent, secretive and probably paranoid, schooled in deception.
Not the girl-next-door she appeared to be.

And she thought he was engaged to be married. Why did she make him keep forgetting that?

His mind needed to be on their common goal — stopping New Dawn and keeping Danielle safe. This dicey situation called for focus and restraint.
He would ignore his seat companion. In fact, he would avoid her except when they had to be in public as lovers. Anything but icy control might blow this whole set-up. He kept his gaze on what passed for scenery — strip malls and new brick McMansions plopped on treeless lawns.

“Approaching choke point,” Snow said from the front as they headed left on Connecticut Avenue.

Apparently DARK and Special Forces used the same jargon for a blind spot prime for ambush. “You expect another attempt?” Nick turned to his
fiancée
.

The car turned off Connecticut into the neighborhood streets that led to Alexei’s house.

“These narrow, winding streets are funneling us to our destination. DARK did a sweep earlier, so it should be clear. Caution’s a good idea anyway.”
She combed her fingers through her long hair, and then let it fall across her shoulders in cognac-colored waves.

Something about the hair… A memory stirred, amorphous and distant, and he shook it away as irrelevant.

In spite of Alexei’s extravagances, Nick liked the neighborhood, one of the oldest in the Maryland suburbs. Stately homes in Tudor and Colonial styles sat in repose like dowagers at the end of a banquet table. Privacy fences or stone walls shielded some estates, and expansive, landscaped lawns distanced houses from streets. Old maples and beeches shaded decks and porches. Driveways curved to garages. Only a few vehicles were parked on the street.

“Most of these belong to employees and visitors.” He nodded toward a truck with Zeno’s Lawn Care painted on the side. “That’s the same company that mows Alexei’s lawn.”

The woman cocked her head at him. “It’s your lawn now. He left everything to you, didn’t he?”

He nodded ruefully. The property, the business, the debts. The trouble. Until he could unload it all.
“Everything. More than I bargained for.”

The Mercedes made a left onto Park Boulevard, a street hardly wide enough for the landscaped median between the lanes. Ahead of them, a tan pickup truck pulled from the curb at an angle and stopped, blocking their way.

“Snow! A stopper, up ahead.” The woman withdrew a small pistol from the driver’s seat-back pocket. She looked out the rear window. “And a plug to box us in.”

Nick turned. A green sedan pulled up behind them.

Adrenaline surged in a rush that threw him back more than a decade to a Somali village and a snatch-and-grab that had gone sour because of an ambush. Remembered smells of sweat, dust and cordite filled his senses. Dread raked his spine.

Time slowed and perceptions sharpened. Gasoline fumes and the woman’s fragrance flared his nostrils. Her piece was a Smith & Wesson 640. He could distinguish individual grains of dirt smearing the pickup’s license plate.
Long-suppressed battle instincts kicked in.

All in an instant of real time.

“Stop the car!” he barked. “I know this street. You can cut across by that driveway on the left.”

The pickup’s driver’s door opened. A man stepped out, shielded by the door. He wielded a long-barreled handgun.

The woman’s green eyes glittered with skepticism as she seemed to weigh Nick’s suggestion. “Let’s do it.”

“Snow, here’s your chance for off-roading,” he said. “Hang a left across the median. See the driveway?”

Without a word, the driver swung the big sedan onto the median strip. It powered between two trees and across a bed of yellow fall flowers.

The pickup man stepped away from his vehicle, but he didn’t fire. The rear car roared toward them.

The Mercedes bounced across into the other lane.

“Go straight through to the street in back.” A 3-D map of the neighborhood in his mind, Nick was in combat mode.

A uniformed maid ran out of the house and yelled at them as they sped across the yard and onto Park Lane.

“They’re not following,”
Danielle
said, sliding the S&W into a jacket pocket. “Turn right.”
She looked to Nick for verification.

“Affirmative.”

In less than thirty seconds they were speeding along Oakdale Terrace. Snow zipped into the driveway of a massive Tudor-style house. The property sloped to the garage at basement level. He pressed the remote clipped on the visor. The left garage door swung up and open and then closed securely behind them.

“I’ll check the house,” Snow said as he cut the engine.

Vanessa exhaled a relieved breath. Her pulse lowered to an inaudible level. “That was close. We misjudged their readiness. The guys in the SUV must’ve figured out we’d go back to plan A. We wanted to have officers ready to roll them up when they tried that. That mistake won’t happen again.”

“The E&E worked.”

E&E. Escape and evasion.

He sat erect and still, his gaze on the door from the garage to the basement. The jargon and the hunting hawk’s wary alertness in his blue eyes would’ve told her he was military whether or not she’d read his file.
He was a dangerous man in more ways than one. Awareness prickled her forearms.
And he hadn’t even touched her.
She gathered her hair and yanked it upward into the black scrunchie from her pocket. Now that she could relax a little, she needed the mass out of her way. She shook her head to tumble the curls around the top of her head.

“Nessa. No, Vanessa.”

She gaped at Markos. “You know my name.”

“You’re Diana’s sister.” His black brows bunched. The sculpted mouth thinned to a razor blade, and his voice held its sharpness. “The painter. You ruined my best suit.”

Ye gods. “I hoped you’d forgotten.”

Not only was Nick Markos the urbane CEO type her sister had dated, but he actually
had
gone out with Diana. At the memory of their previous encounter, Vanessa couldn’t contain a groan. If he hadn’t recognized her, she wouldn’t have had to deal with the embarrassing episode.

Or with her less-than-professional reaction to this strong and sexy man. Oh, how could she stay detached and cool while acting undercover as his fiancée? How could she stay uninvolved? A nerve-racking challenge. Her stomach clenched.

Snow appeared at the doorway. “All clear.”

Not quite.

***

While Grant Snow showed Vanessa — no, Danielle — to her room and oriented her to the security setup, Nick retreated to the sunroom in the back of the house. He strode across the terra-cotta floor and the beige-and-green Tabriz, another of Alexei’s damn extravagances, and around the cushioned bamboo sofa and chairs.
He stopped at the bank of tall windows overlooking the flagstone terrace and backyard. Staring out blindly, he sucked in calming deep breaths.

Damn. His hands still shook from the adrenaline rush.

For years he’d successfully avoided E&E situations and all physical confrontations outside a gym.
He’d avoided anything that reminded him of why he’d left the army.
And all it took to slam him back into the zone was two cars of bad guys in an ambush.

He wouldn’t go there again. DARK had a full backgrounder on him. They knew of his failure. They wouldn’t trust him, shouldn’t trust him. They sure as hell wouldn’t want him to straphang on their operation. Insert himself where he wasn’t wanted. He was Alexei’s heir and Danielle’s ostensible lover, the go-between with the bad guys.

That was all.

As calm returned, his shoulders relaxed. He turned and passed through the door to the terrace. Earthy smells of drying leaves and bare soil in the planters hung on the warm October breeze.
A wooden privacy fence extended from the sides of the house around the back to enclose stands of maples and shrubbery gone wild. Not very secure.
Too many places for an intruder to conceal himself.
But that was the idea, to let the terrorists think kidnapping Danielle was possible.

At the terrace edge sat a pile of flat rocks next to the half-mortared low wall, part of his brother’s now-aborted landscaping plan. He lowered himself to a stone step and stretched out his legs.

The wall was a reminder of what else he needed to focus on — liquidating all Alexei’s properties. The real Danielle was safe. Let DARK take care of the extremists. From what he’d just witnessed, their people were prepared for contingencies.

Their people included a hell of a shocker — Diana Wade’s sister. That relationship was another reason to stifle his hormones around her. His turned-on reaction to her five years ago — in spite of what she’d done to him — was what had cooled him on Diana.
He’d ignored the attraction then, and he’d ignore it now.
Besides, she was a professional government agent involved in a potentially dangerous situation — with him. Undercover meant a mask, subterfuge, deception.

He shook his head. Danger in his reaction to her. Danger in the situation. Danger in deception.

Good reasons to keep secret his broken engagement. To prop a wall between them. She’d be too professional to breach that barrier. He could use it to shield himself.

He did admire Vanessa’s cool competence. Her decisiveness and intuition in the car ambush told him why she was on point for this op.

On point. Damn. He had to squash the Special Forces mode.

***

“This equipment is better than that at DARK headquarters,” Vanessa said.

The large basement room was a gym complete with stair climber, two treadmills, free weights and a Bowflex machine.

Snow grinned. “Alexei Markos sure spared no expense on this country club.”

“More like a palace.”

Nick had speculated that his brother had spent New Dawn’s skimmed money on the house. That might not be far off.